Download What Is the Gothic? Issues of Genre, Trope, and Form The Gothic is

What Is the Gothic? Issues of Genre, Trope, and Form
The Gothic is used to refer to a number of cultural phenomena from architecture to late20th century youth culture and music to various literary and cinematic works. In general,
the term connotes a fascination with or an investment in the darker side of human
psychology with an emphasis on the unknown or the mysterious and the potentially
terrifying and disturbing. The term originated with the name of some of the Germanic
tribes (e.g., the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths) who sacked Rome and
rampaged across Europe from the 3rd to 5th centuries. More directly, it came to refer to
medieval architecture that rejected classical styles for more ornate structures involving
pointed arches, flying buttresses, and great vaults. This architecture is exemplified in
some of the most famous medieval European cathedrals and castles. In the 18th
century, Gothic architecture experienced a revival in England, and at the same time, an
interest in medieval subjects led to the development of what came to be known as
Gothic literature.
Gothic novels were constructed around certain trope-centered formulas involving
ruined, haunted castles, labyrinths, shadows, omens, and darkness. These novels were
often centered upon heroines in need of frequent rescue and heroes with hidden,
unknown identities. Perhaps more important was the sense of emotion that the Gothic
novel awoke in its readers—a literary experience that would have seemed foreign but
titillating to readers accustomed to the more rational Enlightenment texts. In the Gothic
novel, the reader entered a mysterious world defined by drama, suspense, and terror. In
this way, the Gothic novel was similar to another important literary form of the time: the
sentimental novel. The sentimental novel, like the Gothic, focused on emotions that
would overwhelm the human senses. In these texts, emotion and instinct were of far
greater importance than rational thought. To this extent, these novels signified the clash
between reason and emotion that dominated 18th and 19th century discourse.
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, has been generally credited
as the first Gothic novel. In this case, the term Gothic referred to the novel’s medieval
setting in a castle in Italy, and many of the Gothic novels that followed would similarly
be set in castles from the distant past, often in European countries still dominated (from
an English point of view) by the Catholic Church. As the genre developed, Gothic grew
to include all sorts of texts that involved mysterious, sometimes supernatural events;
extreme emotions, especially elements of terror; convoluted plots with heroines trapped
in ancient castles or abbeys with secret passageways; licentious villains; and multiple
hidden identities. These features continued to define Gothic through Victorian and
American literature and still define Gothic today.
The medieval, or Gothic, setting invoked certain ideas through its implicit contrast with
the contemporary 18th century in England. Where England of the Enlightenment era
often imagined itself as refined and rational, as controlled by a legitimately elected
Saylor URL: www.saylor.org/engl203/#2.3.1
The Saylor Foundation
Saylor.org
Page 1 of 3
government that protected the rights of its citizens and fostered economic and social
progress, the medieval era—especially in other countries—could be demonized as
irrational, as dominated by tyrannical authority linked to the aristocracy and the Catholic
Church (many Gothic villains are either Catholic clergy or from the nobility), and as
saturated by superstitious beliefs, including Catholicism. At the same time that Gothic
texts castigated the medieval era as primitive or unrefined, they simultaneously
suggested or indulged a nostalgic desire for a less rational, less controlled past, if only
from a safe perspective in the present.
Walpole’s novel was incredibly popular and immediately spurred numerous imitations.
Over the next half-century, Gothic novels were probably the most popular subgenre in
England. Their popularity, in some respects, seems to suggest a reaction against the
Enlightenment emphasis on reason, scientific knowledge, and logical explanations.
Fantastic elements within Gothic fiction, such as the haunted castle in Castle of Otranto
or the appearance of demons in Mathew Lewis’s The Monk, conjured up a world vastly
different from the well-ordered, potentially fully knowable universe of much
Enlightenment thought. Further, these works’ emphasis on uncontrollable passions and
on flawed judgment countered the stereotypical view of Enlightenment cool reason. Yet
from its beginning as a form, the novel had focused as much on psychological turmoil,
epistemological uncertainty, and conflicting desires as it had on close observation,
logical calculation, and rational discourse. Enlightenment thinkers most often saw
emotions—at least the right emotions—as intrinsic to the proper functioning of the
individual and society; you will see more on this in the subunit on sentimental fiction.
What differed in the Gothic was that the emotions it described and attempted to call up
in its readers were not those necessary for the proper functioning of a rational society—
particularly sympathy, sensibility to the suffering of others—but rather those that
potentially disrupted social bonds, including unrestrained sexuality and the
sadomasochistic pleasures of dominating others or being terrified. On a deeper level,
Gothic works sometimes suggested the interconnection between these good and bad
emotions or desires, as the ability to sympathize with others led both readers and
heroes and heroines to vicariously experience being terrified and/or terrorizing others.
While Walpole’s novel and many other Gothic texts involved events that were described
as supernatural, many Gothic texts, including those of the most popular Gothic novelist
of the era, Ann Radcliffe, turned on what has been called the explained supernatural. In
those works, events that first appeared inexplicable on the basis of scientific or rational
explanation would later be revealed to be the work of the nefarious plotting of a villain or
to derive from the misunderstanding of the main character, usually a naïve heroine. The
explained supernatural in the Gothic raised the specter of phenomena outside human
knowledge, but in the end these works conformed, to a large extent, with the
Enlightenment’s ideal of being able to discover the logical workings of even the most
mysterious events. At the same time, these works emphasized the difficulty of making
logical sense of the world, the possibility that our understanding is manipulated or illguided, and that, more often than not, our view of the world is flawed by our subjective
viewpoint.
Saylor URL: www.saylor.org/engl203/#2.3.1
The Saylor Foundation
Saylor.org
Page 2 of 3
Another development within late-18th-century British Gothicism was its political use.
Especially in reaction to the French Revolution, British novelists and political writers
frequently invoked Gothic imagery either to describe the terror of the Revolution or to
indicate the irrational conditions that the Enlightenment-inspired Revolution was
supposed to overcome. Most famously, Edmund Burke’s enflamed rhetoric in
Reflections on the Revolution in France partook of the Gothic theme of sexualized
passions raging out of control. On the other hand, the radical political philosopher
William Godwin’s novels, especially Things as They Are; or the Adventures of Caleb
Williams in 1794, use Gothic tropes to describe the unjust nature of the current
undemocratic society. In Godwin’s hands, the mysterious and irrational nature of events
and behavior derived not from the disordered or complex nature of humankind but
rather from the failures of society.
The Gothic has continued to be a popular mode or subgenre since its inauguration but
has often been viewed as less aesthetically significant, yet Gothic elements appear
frequently in canonical literature. In particular, the Romanticism that would
chronologically follow the appearance of the Gothic pursued the path opened by Gothic
fiction with its frequent subordination of reason to emotion and instinct; its willingness to
explore intense, sometimes disruptive passions; and its emphasis on individual,
subjective perspective. Furthermore, the Gothic, as we will see, emerged from the
literary and philosophical considerations of the importance of the individual,
investigations of the relationship between reason and the emotions, and empiricist
attempts to make the body and bodily sensations the foundation of knowledge. In those
ways, despite its sometimes seemingly sensationalist elements and its indulging in the
graphic or in prurient voyeurism, the Gothic provides key insights into literary and
philosophical questions at the center of the late 18th century and of modern thought
more broadly.
Summary
•
•
•
•
•
•
Broadly speaking, Gothic refers to any work that indulges in or explores dark
emotions, supernatural occurrences, and/or mysterious events.
The term Gothic derives directly from medieval architecture and more distantly
from the Germanic tribes who invaded Rome.
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto has been typically credited as the first
Gothic novel and inaugurated many of its key tropes—a medieval setting,
irrational passions, supernatural events.
The Gothic would develop in many ways over the course of the late-18th century,
becoming a tool of politics as well as serving as entertainment.
One of the key developments during this period was the explained supernatural,
epitomized by the works of Ann Radcliffe, in which seemingly supernatural
events are explained through rational causes in the end.
The Gothic was more than the merely sensationalistic or popular; it had firm
bases in the most important philosophical questions of the time and it influenced
later movements such as Romanticism.
Saylor URL: www.saylor.org/engl203/#2.3.1
The Saylor Foundation
Saylor.org
Page 3 of 3